


Fight This War Without Weapons

by DefaltManifesto



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aftercare, Post-Operation Pitfall (Pacific Rim), Queerplatonic Relationships, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6935206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefaltManifesto/pseuds/DefaltManifesto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without the threat of death hanging over them, she struggled to put her thoughts into words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight This War Without Weapons

**Author's Note:**

> Just an idea I've had floating around in my head for awhile. I've noticed a lot of fics where Mako takes care of people but I thought Mako needed to be taken care of. Comments are loved. Title from Elastic Heart by Sia.

[The tumblr](http://schizzar.tumblr.com)

 

Mako is still getting used to having the support she needs. The bond she felt when she and Raleigh drifted together was intense, but with the speed at which everything had happened, fighting every day, losing so many rangers, nearly dying herself, she hadn’t thought too much about what it would be like to have a Drift partner without the threat of being deployed hanging over her head.

She and Raleigh live together. Post Pitfall, it’s the only thing that makes sense. There’s nothing to keep her in the military, not Stacker, not their Jaeger, and certainly not any loyalty to any government. Her loyalty was to the PPDC, and that was being dissolved as quickly as possible in some sort of effort to avoid a war over resources and technology. Sometimes Herc would reach out to one or both of them, pawning off an interview about the importance of neutrality complete with talking points.

Mako usually did those. Raleigh wasn’t any good at not speaking his mind. Whenever she returns from one though, to their small house in the far reaches of northern Canada, she feels drained, like she was used up and spit out. She doesn’t understand why though. She’s done more, dealt with more, physically and mentally. She struggles with how to tell Raleigh that. She trusts him, and she enjoyed the intimacy the Drift gave them. Without it though, without the threat of death hanging over them, she struggled to put her thoughts into words.

Raleigh notices though. She’s seen his past and she knows that he wasn’t always keenly aware of everyone’s emotional states. She knows that’s something that came with Drifting with his brother as well as losing him. She knows that he’s just waiting for her to talk and that until then, he’ll be patient and support her, exist alongside her as a steady presence that knows what she’s gone through.

She wonders sometimes if they’ll ever get separate families. She knows they aren’t going to marry each other because all she feels for Raleigh is a deep love and affection that has nothing to do with romance and she knows he’s the same. At the same time, she couldn’t imagine existing with another person, loving another person, the way she does with Raleigh. And maybe that’s what makes it all the more important that she actually reaches out and talks instead of holding it all inside and hoping it will go away if she ignores it long enough.

So after dinner one day when they’re sitting on the couch reading separate books, she leans forward and hooks a finger through Raleigh’s reading glasses and tugs them off, folding them and holding them in her lap so she has his full attention. He smiles and shuts his book.

“Something you need?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says.

 

-.-

 

The first time Raleigh ties her up, she almost has a panic attack. She isn’t sure why. She’s trusted him with far more than her bodily autonomy while she kneels on their bedroom floor. They’ve seen each other naked before too so it’s not that either. She gets herself under control pretty quickly though and after asking if she was sure a few more times, Raleigh starts to weave the rope around the curves of her body, running intricate lines from her wrists up to her shoulders and then down the center of her chest and under the curves of her breasts. The rope feels rough even though they bought the softer type meant specifically for this sort of thing. She likes that it prickles and scratches though.

Raleigh takes a picture of what she looks like on his phone and then lets her see it. It’s not as pretty as some of the examples they’d looked at online, but she likes it, feels like some sort of canvas for the artwork of the rope. Now that the panic has left, she feels more settled too, the ropes like comforting restraints holding all of the bits in that just want to fly apart.

“I’ll stay this time,” Raleigh says. “I’ll be out of sight though. I just want to make sure you’re okay this time.”

She’d said she wanted to be alone, but after her bit of panic of when they started, she agrees with him. “I think that would be good.”

He drops a kiss on her forehead and then moves away, crawling up on the bed. Mako doesn’t know what he ends up doing, but he’s quiet, the sheets only rustling every once in a while which makes her think he’s probably just watching her and keeping his focus to make sure she’s okay. The knowledge that he’s watching is more comforting than she thought it would be. She’d wanted to be alone at first, but something about being bound up and restrained with Raleigh close by and making sure she’s safe and okay reminds her of the feeling of when they were in the Drift.

Sure, their bedroom in the middle of nowhere is hardly as dangerous as fighting giant ocean monsters, but the reliance on Raleigh and the intimacy that comes with that is the same and it’s incredibly soothing. She lets herself slump forward in her bonds, the rope biting into her skin as she bows her head. She almost falls asleep like that, the discomfort nothing like what she’d endured before. Like then, the discomfort sinks into the back of her head, unimportant.

Some amount of time later, long after she lost track of it, Raleigh squeezes her shoulder in warning and then begins to undo the careful bindings. A few times he has to grab the scissors to cut a few of the stubborn knots loose, and once she’s free she can’t help but slump over into his weight, trembling as she comes back into her body and all the aches and pains of holding herself so still while bound up.

 “Shower?” he asks. “The warm water might be good.”

“Yes, please,” she says.

They bought a big shower, remodeling an old bedroom into their bathroom. There’s several shower heads and for a while, she just stands under one with Raleigh’s arms wrapped her and her face turned up into the spray. When she’s ready, she shifts away and grabs the soap to start washing herself off, reacquainting herself with her body as though it had turned into some foreign thing. Raleigh sits on the bench and watches her clean up, only coming over to do her hair when she holds the shampoo out to him.

Having his hands on her helps too. There’s nothing sexual about his touch, even when she presses back against him. It’s just a closeness that she doesn’t have words for, a partnership in which they are equal in a way she has never truly felt with anyone. He pulls her from the shower and they dry one another off. Sometime after he tied her up, he must have laid out new clothes for her because when she walks back into the bedroom, her favorite pair of sweats and a shirt she’d stolen from Chuck years ago are laid out for her to change into.

Once she’s warm and dry, they return to the couch in the living room and she curls up against him.

“Do you think…” he starts.

She tilts her chin up. “Hm?”

“Do you think sometime you could do that for me?” he asks, voice soft with a slight tremble to it.

“Of course,” she says. She settles back into him. “Of course.”


End file.
